Tag: Finnish winters

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The Finnish Happiness

When you are a foreigner exploring a new culture, there is no shortage of stuff to wonder about. Something will keep coming your way throughout your stay.

And so it has been many times when I (and my fellow foreigners) have wondered about Finland being the happiest country in the world, time and again.

This journey of discovery is to each their own. You can search it on the internet and easily find articles analyzing what the reasons are for it. But when you are living in Finland, that is just not enough, is it? You will notice your surroundings, think about this, discuss it with others, and try to find out why in the world is it so (because those articles on the internet, what do they know about it).

And in my personal journey-of-discovery, I think I may have come upon at least one profound, contributing factor.

Finland is basically a happy country. By default. In other parts of the world, people become happy if something happens, but in Finland, you can be happy if something doesn’t happen. Like slipping and falling on ice. This has to be one of the biggest factors. Like you went to work, walked the full some-150-meters distance of it, didn’t slip and fall down, and now you can be happy about it. In fact, now you can be happy about it everyday (seeing as the ice doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon).

Tasks as mundane as getting groceries suddenly become feats of accomplishment (because, you guessed it, you didn’t slip and fall during the entire time you were out). And of course, this also gives rise to a sense of camaraderie with your fellow pedestrians, especially if you see someone slip a little and stumble. Then you can root for them to please-not-fall (and be happy for them when they have regained their balance).

Looking at it statistically, it is far more likely that you will have more days when you wouldn’t slip and fall compared to the few days when you, inevitably, will do. So more happy days. At least in this time of the year.

And if you can be happy in this slushy, icy time of the year, that should probably count.

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The Finnish Winters

This seems to be the primary ice breaker in Finland: “So, how are you enjoying the Finnish winters?” (It’s even phrased almost the same way). Or may be that was just because I arrived here smack dab in the middle of winters.

Sometimes I laugh it off. Sometimes I just do a general commentary on that day’s weather. And sometimes, I admit to hating it. 

Where I come from, it’s 48-degree-Celsius-in-peak-time-of-summer hot. And snow, that’s fairy dust for us. People revere snow. Of course, we do have snow in some parts of the country, and all trips to these “exotic” regions are planned according to when there’s snow in the forecast or the news.

Apart from these once-in-a-while excursions, we are not adapted to winters that are as frigidly cold as the Finnish ones, or as dark.

Here, there’s more snow in a month than the total I had seen in my life before coming here, so of course after a while, I started suffering from this condition called too-much-snow. But then the days got longer and we moved from snow to slush, and it was all going very well. In fact, it was happening just like I expected it to – except that it snowed in again after some days, and again after some more days, and again.

So may be it was my pride that got hurt (because it didn’t go just as I expected), or my elbow when I slipped on a bad piece of ice, but I cannot say I will have fond memories of my first Finnish winter (which, people tell me was colder in this part of the country than it usually is). May be next year, when I’m more adapted to the cold, and have probably gotten myself into trying something winter-specific.

It’s all good for some time, but man! where is that spring season one of my colleagues promised me was just around the corner?